Inside Out: Art in Buffalo, NY
Buffalo is a city with art at its heart. Inspiring inventive work welcomes the curious. Masterpieces, new and old, await discovery from within the gallery walls of elegant places and repurposed landmarks and on the outside — on lawns, sidewalks, the waterfront and as murals on buildings.
As home to the nation’s sixth oldest public art institution and one of the leading modern and contemporary art museums in the world, roots here have branches you can see: Start at the historic Buffalo AKG Art Museum where vibrant work beckons from within its glass walls and from the grounds around Elmwood Avenue. At the entrance, a giant red, blue and green LOVE sculpture spells out the local feeling for art. Keep going and find some of Buffalo’s best. Ten stops to consider for getting to the highlights, inside and out, and a secret: In Buffalo, art awaits at every turn.
INSIDE
The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, 1285 Elmwood Ave., debuted an expansion in 2023 with a sparkling new three-story glass building and a welcoming lawn and sculptural glass enclosure. Its focus: modern and contemporary art with likes of Picasso and Marisol, and new arrivals like the visiting Yayoi Kusama exhibition and infinity mirror rooms.
Burchfield Penney Art Center, 1300 Elmwood Ave. Turn sculptures that flash the pink, yellow and orange at the entrance of this regional museum with diverse contemporary work and this starting point: Watercolors by Buffalo’s Charles Burchfield vibrate with color, emotion and his unique approach to the 20th-century American landscape.
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Ave., was founded by artists, including Cindy Sherman. Now the is within a renovated 1874 church and Asbury Hall concert venue dubbed Babeville by Buffalo- singer songwriter Ani DiFranco who once headquartered her record company there.
CEPA Gallery, 617 Main St. From its home in the Market Arcade Complex, an airy 1892 shopping arcade and precursor to modern-age malls, the gallery shows contemporary photography with local themes and hosts classes.
TENfold Gallery, 225 Louisiana St., a newly opened gallery, one of two by nonprofit Art Resource, sells paintings, sculpture and mixed media art with 10 percent of proceeds reinvested into local nonprofits. The building, a repurposed 1919 factory for Barcalounger recliners, now holds apartments, a salon, a brewery and a vegan café.
OUT
The Freedom Wall,1525 Michigan Ave. A 2017 portrait mural by local artists celebrate leaders – from Rosa Parks and Angela Davis to W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall – and span a corner of a bus maintenance depot at one end of the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor.
An untitled mural at 1188 Hertel Ave. by Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra. Mark Twain, editor of a Buffalo newspaper during the years surrounding his 1870 marriage, sits next to John T. Lewis, a friend in the Finger Lakes region believed to have inspired Jim in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
This Shirley Chisholm statue by Julia Bottoms, 1990 Main St., marks the resting place at Forest Lawn Cemetery’s Birchwood Mausoleum of the first Black woman elected to Congress. A Brooklyn-native, she moved to Buffalo after marrying a former state legislator. Find the reminder of her quip, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
Gastowë’ 85 Silo City Row, is the Seneca word for headdress. This 16-foot version by Seneca artist Bill Crouse is made from patterned steel by Rigidized Metals, the neighbor, and owner, of the Silo City campus with century-old silos and buildings repurposed as art spaces, apartments, a music venue tavern and trails.
Shark Girl, 70 Pearl St., is a Canalside icon. Snap a photo with her and consider the therapeutic meaning: Ohio artist Casey Riordan says the shark’s head girl is reminder to calm irrational fears. She told a local TV station the inspiration came from her girlhood worry that sharks were in swimming pools.
